


Pilgrimage

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-28
Updated: 2004-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by Cygna-hime</p><p>They go out there every year, to do their growing up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pilgrimage

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Angel

 

 

Pilgrimage

They ran out there every year, regular as a deathwatch-beetle clock, out beyond the trees and town to where the empty field waited like a promise of nightmares coming back. They didn't wait for the nightmares to find them again, not tonight, but ran to meet them head-on, running silent in the October night.

Jim Nightshade, not yet eighteen, pounded his feet on the grass as he ran, forcing himself to continue against the shadows of his name that made him want to go back, just this one night, and hide in a comfortable bed from what he knew he could never outrun. A glance at his companion held him there, running, unable to turn back because whatever happened, Will would go on. Will, eyes bright with summer rain and face like a new-picked peach, would go on through shadow and shade for this one night. And Jim could not, would not let him go alone.

Town slipped away beneath their feet, swallowed by the night that might never end in the October of their seventeenth year. Four years it had been, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, that they made this run. Fifth time would pay for all. It would have to do.

They ran fast, not eager, no, not even Jim anymore, but wanting to get it over with, get it done. One night, one hour, and they could sleep again and forget. So they ran.

The silent field waited, under the half-moon light. They could remember, if they tried, other half-moons of other months, and minds could say that this was no different, but intellect found it impossible to face down the silent wind-whispers that said no, this is a night unlike any other, this is a different moon, this is different. No other night of the year could be as silent as October twenty-fourth. No other hour could be as cold as three in the morning.

They stopped, the two boys-not-quite-men, just where the trees weren't. The smooth grass of the field stretched away unbroken, perfect. No one who did not know could say that yes, the spot just here was once an ocean of glass, and under this tree was time on wooden horses. But Will could tell by the way the air smelled, like cotton candy and licorice, and Jim could feel the warning in the tingle of his spine, and they knew they were there. Almost the wind played a note of music that they knew of old (or of young), almost they could catch the tune of a calliope being played somewhere far away. Where the carnival had been, its mark would always remain.

"It's still gone," Will said unnecessarily.

"Yeah." Jim looked out over what had once, five years before, been a fairground. The silent mass of an old, old train was barely invisible on the horizon, looming like a phantom at the corner of sight.

"It's silly," said Will, pale face paler in the silvery moonlight, "but I keep expecting that one year we'll come down here, and there it'll be. Again. And the same thing, all over again."

"God, I hope not."

"Yeah."

Jim shivered with the whistling of the wind. Unlike Will, his face grew only darker in the light of the half-moon, as though one took all the light and the other all the shadow. "Sometimes I think it was a dream we had, Will, you and me. Round about July, I can't believe it was ever this cold. Then just come out here, and the whole thing jumps out of the grass and hits me. Hell! Right now, it's the real thing, seems like; it's all the rest that's the dream."

"Oh, c'mon, Jim, it isn't that bad!" Will laughed, almost forced but not quite, like hints of Christmas bells in the October night. "This is plenty real, sure, but so's home. Mom was making cookies already, getting a head start on Christmas. That's real, if anything is." He took a deep breath, denying the shadow world. "I can still smell them from here."

"Oh, Will, Will," and suddenly, Jim was laughing, not quite hysterical with relief and fear that had finally hid from itself, "always looking on the bright side, Will. You got some rose-colored glasses I can't see?"

The laughter died eventually, crushed by the force of memory that bore down on it. Here, if anywhere, was a place to think hard about other things. Laughter didn't quite fit.

"College next year," Jim said eventually. "No more running out here."

"Not in October, anyway. Say, Jim, you won't forget me, will you? You'll remember after we leave?"

"Forget you?" Jim's green eyes flickered bright as summer woods. "How could I forget you, Will? What kind of person do you think I am, to forget someone like you?"

Will shrugged, embarrassed. "I don't know, it's just...out here, you remember things different. Maybe it's just the air, or something, but I wondered if you'd still jump at the chance to leave me behind. I didn't mean it, really."

"I hope not!" Jim grinned sharply, wolflike, then his smile faded. "D'you want me to, Will? I mean, just go off and let you alone? `Cause I don't want to, wasn't planning to, but if you don't want me anymore..." The sentence hung in the air like a broken promise.

"No!" Will was surprised at the loudness of his own voice. "No, I don't want you to go!" He scuffed his shoe on the grass. "I didn't mean it. Just forget I said it."

"Sure." Jim paused, looking out at the night full of echoes. "Will?"

"What is it?"

"We're friends, right? Whatever happens?"

"Of course, Jim, best friends. Do you have to ask?"

Jim shrugged. "I think so, yeah." Will stared at him, gazing out into nothing, but didn't ask. Sometimes, he'd decided, it was better not. He never got answers when Jim was in a mood like this. "Will?" Jim was looking at him at last. Well, maybe he would get an answer, at that.

"Yeah, Jim?"

"No matter what, right?" Will started to ask what Jim meant, but suddenly he was too close, warm breath on Will's face and warm lips on his, and suddenly it didn't much matter what he had been going to say.

Jim pulled away almost at once. "Always planned on waiting until we were eighteen," he said with forced casualness, "but now's as good a time as any."

"Always?" Will choked. "How-how long?"

"A while. I didn't want to tell you. Figured...I guess I just figured I'd get it over with before college. Sorry."

"Sorry? I think you'd better not be sorry! What'd you go and do that for, if you're going to be sorry about it?" Will realized that he was shouting, almost, and tried to be quieter for fear of waking the town. "Did you not want to or something?"

Jim looked nonplussed. "Well, no, but--"

"Then what's the problem?" Will grinned at Jim's confusion. "I don't know about you, but I have no intention of waiting till after college for another kiss."

Jim finally smiled. "Well then--"

Some time later, on the long walk back to town, Will asked, "What were you planning on doing if I'd run away or something?"

"I hadn't really thought it out. Hide in my house for the next year or so, maybe?"

"Just as well I didn't, then! You'd have burned the place down inside of a week."

"Will, you--"

"Shh! You'll wake your mother!"

With muffled laughter and goodnights, they swarmed up their hidden ladders into bedrooms that waited for them. Everything returned to the normal calm of an October night. Everything, except the minute hint of cotton candy on the breeze and the smiles of the boys who fell asleep, contented, in the early hours of the morning.

Jim and Will seemed to do all their aging around three o'clock of late October nights.

 


End file.
